TikTok adding new features to stop fake news and misinformation spreading Unsplash: Solen FeyissaTikTok is tackling the scourge of mis- and disinformation by launching a new feature that highlights the uncertainty of unverified content, aiming to slow its spread across the app. From today in the US and Canada, and February 22 in the UK, any video that TikTok\u2019s content moderators or fact checkers have tried to check but cannot immediately verify will have a banner appended to it saying that the video may contain unsubstantiated content. If a viewer then tries to share that video, a further prompt will appear reminding them that the video contains content that couldn\u2019t be verified, and asking them if they really want to share the video anyway. In trials conducted by the platform, the combination of the banner questioning the content and the prompt reminding viewers resulted in a 24% decrease in sharing of videos with potentially false content. \u201cPeople come to TikTok to be creative, find community, and have fun,\u201d said Gina Hernandez, product manager in TikTok\u2019s trust and safety team, in a blog post announcing the feature. \u201cBeing authentic is valued by our community, and we take the responsibility of helping counter inauthentic, misleading, or false content to heart.\u201d The banner and prompt will be particularly useful in the case of breaking news events, where it\u2019s often difficult to immediately substantiate whether information being shared is true or false. By disincentivizing engagement, TikTok hopes to slow the spread of fake news around live news events. \u201cWe\u2019ve designed this feature to help our users be mindful about what they share,\u201d said Hernandez. The feature is being introduced to accompany, not replace, TikTok\u2019s current policies on misinformation. In the first half of 2020, TikTok removed around 1.25 million videos worldwide for issues of \u201cintegrity and authenticity\u201d \u2013 around 1.2% of all the videos they removed during that six months, and around 6,930 a day. Those videos would still be removed for being false, Dexerto understands \u2013 but on more borderline cases, where it\u2019s difficult to ascertain objective fact in a situation, the new features could help reduce the speed of spread on the app. The feature was developed by TikTok in conjunction with behavioural science experts Irrational Labs, and as well as reducing the shareability of content, it also decreased the number of likes questionable videos received by 7% in trials. \u201cLabelling of content has been previously used by other tech-firms to combat misinformation,\u201d said Yevgeniy Golovchenko, who studies disinformation at the University of Copenhagen. \u201cExisting research from other platforms suggests that labels may indeed help curb the labelled stories.\u201d The academic points out that a similar method has been previously deployed by Facebook on some of its content. Golovchenko does, however, sound a note of caution about the feature. \u201cThere is also research which points towards potential dangers of using this technique,\u201d he said. \u201cBy labelling some content, a social media platform can potentially make other non-labelled content \u2013 both false and true \u2013 appear more reliable.\u201d Research by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed the so-called \u201cimplied truth effect\u201d was a risk. \u201cWhen it comes such policies, regardless of whether they are implemented by TikTok, Instagram or other platforms, it is super important that the tech firms are transparent,\u201d he added. \u201cThis should be done by providing researchers and journalists with accessible data on the labelling: What is labelled, when and why.\u201d Some of those concerns may be headed off by the scale of TikTok\u2019s moderation and fact-checking team, which is also being beefed up through a new partnership with Logically, one of the world\u2019s biggest dedicated fact-checking organisations. They are \u201csupporting our efforts to determine whether content shared on the platform is false, misleading or misinformation,\u201d said Hernandez, who added: \u201cIf fact checks confirm content to be false, we\u2019ll remove the video from our platform.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TikTok adding new features to stop fake news and misinformation spreading Unsplash: Solen FeyissaTikTok is tackling the scourge of mis- and disinformation by launching a new feature that highlights the uncertainty of unverified content, aiming to slow its spread across the app. From today in the US and Canada, and February 22 in the UK, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60470\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}